


(separate into) ripples

by schneestern



Category: Bandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:40:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6583579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schneestern/pseuds/schneestern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://no-tags.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://no-tags.livejournal.com/">no_tags</a> prompt <i>Bert/Quinn, vampire AU</i>. Thanks to my wonderful beta <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://desticex.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://desticex.livejournal.com/">desticex</a>, who totally helped at the very last minute.</p>
    </blockquote>





	(separate into) ripples

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://no-tags.livejournal.com/profile)[no_tags](http://no-tags.livejournal.com/) prompt _Bert/Quinn, vampire AU_. Thanks to my wonderful beta [](http://desticex.livejournal.com/profile)[desticex](http://desticex.livejournal.com/), who totally helped at the very last minute.

Quinn is twelve – scrawny, lonely – twelve years old when he gets the disease.One night he wakes up, bed wet from where he peed in it. He's sweaty all over and he can see things move in the dark, sharp and clear.

The next morning the sunshine that comes through the window makes him scream in pain. It seems impossible to hide from. Faintly, he hopes this is a nightmare, but he knows it isn't the moment he hears the sirens outside, his parents rushing into his room.

The last memory Quinn has of his parents are their faces, wide open with understanding as they watch him cower in the corner of the room, safe behind his wardrobe. The sharp teeth are making his bottom lip bleed wetly over his chin.

–

The rehabilitation facilities chuck him out after three years. They try everything they know, swap his blood completely, pump him full of pills and fluids instead that taste like peppermint and make him retch for weeks on end.

Quinn loses so much weight, he stops looking into mirrors, because he's started to scare himself. They make him watch endless educational videos of people dying and being killed. After a while it all blurs together into faceless dead bodies, like marionettes, littering Quinn's vision.

It's impossible to break out from that place but Quinn tries anyway, twice during his stay there. Both times two weeks go missing from his mind after the break-out. He always wakes up to broken arms in casts though.

“Deficient,” is what they put on his papers right before they throw him out. Of course matters don't get easier from there. But by now Quinn doesn't expect easy anymore.

-

He gets implanted with a chip, right over his heart. The wound will never quite heal, because Quinn can't stop scratching the stitches. He gets dropped into a shelter, a dark black hole far from the surface, that has wet walls and too many social rejects to count.

Quinn's not particularly fond of the sun, but he hates the guards in that place even more. The guards and the others like him, who keep licking their teeth, as if they could find something to eat down here.

One day two of the guards break his nose and one of his long, sharp teeth. It's the day Quinn breaks out. He licks the blood from his face, wraps himself in a dark blanket and is at the right place, at the right time.

When he's outside for the first time in years, he stops under a tree, shadows from the moon giving him shelter. He takes a breath in the fresh night air. Licks his broken tooth as it slowly grows back to its original size.

And he smiles.

-

It's surprisingly easy to live a comfortable life, moving around, killing, sleeping. Quinn gets used to it so fast the last memories of his former life start to disappear from his mind. He forgets he ever had parents, forgets the warm smell of home or the way blankets feel to the touch.

By seventeen he's one of the many killers roaming the streets of the downtown area. The government tried to quarantine them, tried to poison them, but so far no one's been able to touch Quinn.

He can't exactly pinpoint the moment he stopped thinking of his condition as a disease and started thinking of it as normal. The little wounds in his bottom lip never quite heal and when he gets excited from the hunt he bites them open, the smell of his own blood egging him on. He sleeps on the second floor of an abandoned office building, the four or so hours that there's sunlight during the day.

Eventually, he stops keeping track of time, stops trying to form packs with others like him. There's just the hunt and the sleep that interrupts it.

-

The night the thing attacks him, Quinn's out in the big park by the river. He doesn't call what he does hunting, he's not as confident as that yet. But he's following a trail, can almost taste the blood on his lips.

It's like a need that thrums in his veins sometimes, not exactly a feeling of being thirsty, more like an itch that needs to be scratched. He gets by on food in trash cans outside the food manufacturing buildings, but the blood is something pure that satisfies on a deeply emotional level.

He's following a young man, long orange-y beard, broad shoulders. Quinn hasn't gotten a lot stronger, no heightening of the senses like the others, but he's gotten faster. He knows he can take the guy.

But then he rounds a corner, temporarily losing sight of his mark, and gets tackled by something fast and smelly. One moment he's standing, the next moment he's rolling into one of the high bushes, the stranger right on top of him.

Quinn lashes out on instinct, gets a bite of skin and pulls. The thing yowls and then bites him back and as the scream of pain mixes with the sweet taste of blood in his throat, Quinn temporarily forgets everything around him.

A moment later the thing pulls away, messy blond hair falling all over its face, but it's undeniably a face. The thing is a person.

“You're a diseased,” it – the guy – says wonderingly and absently scratches at the bleeding wound on the side of his neck.

Quinn lunges for him again and he's not entirely sure whether it's because of the fresh smell of blood or because he hates being called diseased. Before he can get to the guy though, he gets bodily pulled back. He struggles but his attacker is stronger, throws him back into the bushes.

The thorny branches dig into Quinn's back until it's all he can feel and he has to force his eyes to open. He looks right into his mark's face. Before he can decide on a course of action the bearded man backhands him hard. There's a faint ringing in Quinn's ears and he barely has time to take a breath before the guy hits him again, flat palm of his hand connecting with the side of Quinn's face.

Faintly, Quinn notes that the food from earlier is roiling in his stomach, but bearded guy is already pulling his arm back again and Quinn braces himself to take it and then make a run for it.

The blow never comes.

When Quinn focuses again, the little blond guy has pulled the beardy one away.

“You're gonna kill him, if you keep doing that,” he says, never looking away from Quinn. It's kind of disconcerting, because while his neck is still bleeding, the guy looks as if he's seen God or something equally mesmerizing.

“He tried to kill you first,” the bearded man points out. He scratches his beard but doesn't make another move towards Quinn.

“Whatever, we tried to mug him,” the other guy says cheerfully.

Quinn watches them quietly, tries to gauge how dizzy he'll be if he goes into a sprint now. He decides to risk it, slowly counts to three in his head.

Just as the blond guy turns towards him again, that expecting glitter still in his eyes, like Quinn is something so new and exciting he can barely contain himself, Quinn scrambles out of the bushes and makes a run for it.

He manages to get away from them, throws up on the street two blocks away and jogs home as fast as his body can allow. For the next few days he stays low, lives off of homeless people who are too drunk to run or care.

-

It takes a while until he forgets about the incident. First he has trouble to remember the beardy man's face and why the hell he followed him in the first place. Then he forgets about how much being hit had hurt. He forgets the small guy's name, forgets the color of his hair.

What stays with him are the eyes. There had been something in them, a sort of understanding of being -- diseased, outcast.

Independent.

-

The woman's writhing beneath him and Quinn has trouble keeping her from hitting him over the head with her purse. He's distracted by the smell of her blood, layered underneath the scent of sweat and perfume and peppermint drops.

He holds a hand over her mouth and squeezes her throat until she goes soft, still under him. Drinking her blood doesn't feel as satisfying as it should. It's stale already, death always tainting it a little. Quinn drinks her dry anyway, sucking from different points so as not to waste a drop. The patrols have gotten stronger around here, more violent. He needs to watch his back.

Just then there's the slow crack of a dry branch or maybe a syringe breaking. Before Quinn can turn around something's landing heavily on his back. He slumps sideways, away from the dead woman.

“Gotcha,” a voice says and then hands are tugging at Quinn, turning him over.

He looks straight into the guy's face, those eyes, that have been following him around.

“I knew it was you,” the guy crows triumphantly and Quinn cringes, instinctively looks around for a patrol squad.

“I'm Bert,” the guy says and holds out his hand as if he wants to offer Quinn something, but his hand is empty and white. Quinn stares at it, then at the guy's face. Slowly, he reaches for the hand and then in one quick motion pulls it close and bites into it.

There's the satisfying sound of skin and meat tearing, the first tastes of blood.

Quinn drinks hastily, knows that any moment now the guy will fight him, try to run.

He drinks and drinks and slowly realizes that nothing's happening. When he breaks off to see if he accidentally killed the guy called Bert, he's staring right into his bright eyes again.

“Wow,” Bert says, gaze a little unfocused. Maybe it's the blood loss. Quinn shifts under him, adrenaline and fear turning into a low humming noise in his mind. He licks the blood off his teeth, wonders if he can risk drinking more or if Bert's mood will suddenly shift.

Then Bert pushes his bloody wrist against Quinn's mouth.

“I like you,” he says, “You're not--you're,” he pauses and regards Quinn, “I think you're like me.” He licks his blunt white teeth and leans forward. Before Quinn can pull back Bert's bitten into his wrist, drawing a thin trickle of blood. It feels so different this way, like Quinn's sucking his own blood somehow.

When Bert pulls back his lips are dark red.

And he's smiling. 


End file.
